


my black eye casts no shadow

by Queelez



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (mild body horror - see notes), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Body Horror, F/F, Non-Explicit Sex, ladies being awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 07:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18162692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queelez/pseuds/Queelez
Summary: Carol Danvers and Brunnhilde get into a few fights.  Some of them are even with other people.  Set post-Captain Marveland vaguely pre-Thor Ragnarok.





	my black eye casts no shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: Mentions of forced roboticization, along with the replacement of body parts of various cybernetics. No on-page depictions of the above.

The first impression Brunnhilde has of Carol Danvers is a fist to the jaw.

To be fair, she’s been raring for a fight for the last hour. Whenever she lands on a new planet, the first thing Brunnhilde does is scope out the nearest bar, order the cheapest drink with the highest proof, and then order three more. It’s a habit that hasn’t failed her yet. But today, getting permission to land was a headache and a half, the closest bar to the port was closed for renovations, and the bartender’s shirt pissed her off. After her shots, she tries to find some trouble: challenges some people to arm wrestle, wins them all, and eventually starts shoving around somebody with an ugly haircut who looks like an easy target.

And then she gets cold-clocked.

It’s a good punch. Whoever dished it out knows to swing with their hips, and has a lot of power behind it, more than Brunnhilde’s felt in a while. She staggers back but doesn’t fall, checking her mouth for blood while looking around to see who decked her.

“You wanna back off, dude?” a voice says. Brunnhilde turns to the source, and there she is: blonde girl in some sort of red-and-blue suit, sporting a jacket with a few funky patches. Sigils, maybe, or a coat of arms. She’s got her hands on her hips and her eyebrows raised right into her annoyingly perfect hair. Brunnhilde tackles her into a table. It cracks under them and they fall to the floor in a mess of wood splinters and shattered glass and stale beer. Blondie tries to hit her again, this time in the shoulder, but Brunnhilde’s ready this time and tanks through it before returning in kind with a punch to the solar plexus. Blondie grunts and grabs Brunnhilde’s shoulders and throws her off, sending her crashing into the next table.

She’s vaguely aware of the crowd scattering around them. Some grab their drinks and move to the other corner of the bar, not caring about a brawl, while others egg them on and cheer. Brunnhilde flips to her feet, but Blondie’s already up. She feints, and Blondie falls for it, giving Brunnhilde the chance to spin and get her in a headlock. Blondie chokes and moves to grab a bottle, but Brunnhilde kicks it away. It puts her off-balance long enough for Blondie to throw her forwards. She rights herself in mid-air, landing on top of the bar with perfect precision.

Alright. This might be fun.

Brunnhilde punches, and Blondie blocks it. Jabs, she dodges. Kicks, she grabs her ankle and squeezes hard enough that Brunnhilde just about feels something give before pulling out of her grasp. Blondie grapples, punches, punches, punches again; Brunnhilde counters, suplexes, endures. She’s laughing, and Blondie’s laughing, and it’s just what she needs. She grabs a pool cue and tries to crack her skull with it, but Blondie catches it mid-air, and Brunnhilde realizes that her other fist is glowing. It makes her pause long enough to really get another look and for the first time, she notices the emblem on Blondie’s chest. She’s seen that star and those stripes before, on news broadcasts and spray-painted on the sides of buildings.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says. “You’re Carol Danvers?”

“Aww, you’ve heard of me?” says Carol Danvers.

Brunnhilde lets go of the pool cue and relaxes. Everybody knows Carol Danvers. They call her the Savior of Torfa, the Kree’s Reckoning, Warbird, the Binary Judgement, and who knows how many other titles and nicknames. There’s nearly as many stories about Carol Danvers as there are people to tell them. She stopped Ronan the Accuser’s bombardment single-handedly. She stopped a meteorite from wiping out a research station. She found the King of Telos after he’d gone into hiding, and dragged him to the Nova Empire to stand trial. They say she’s even got a pet Flerken. Story goes, she’s the only one in all the universe who knows where the Skrulls fled after their near-extinction, and rearranged the stars to hide them.

Carol Danvers is a legend, and she’s standing right there.

“I heard you’re a God,” she says.

Danvers shakes her head. “Nah. I’d make a sucky God.”

“Good. I hate Gods.” Brunnhilde spits some blood onto the floor and looks at herself in the reflection of an arcade machine. Her eye’s bruised, and her lips are split wide open. It’ll heal. “Thanks, I needed that fight. Name’s Brunnhilde. Want a drink?”

\---

“I’ve got a job for you,” Danvers says. She’s matched Brunnhilde drink-for-drink and isn’t unconscious, which is honestly pretty impressive. There’s a bit of pink around her cheeks, and while she’s not slurring her words, she’s speaking with a precision that signals she’s making an effort not to. “Rescue op.”

“Can’t you just do it yourself? Fly down and punch a hole through a wall?”

Danvers shakes her head. “Can’t be too flashy. This is a two person job. Sneak in, find prisoners. You to lead them to safety, me to be a distraction.”

“Are you saying I can’t be a distraction?” Brunnhilde socks Carol in the arm with enough force to bruise most people. Carol doesn’t flinch. “I’m real distracting.”

Carol laughs. It’s nice, the way her grin sparks across her face like a firework, how she laughs into the back of her hand. “Yeah, I noticed. But the distracting’s the more dangerous part. I don’t ask somebody I don’t know for that.” That’s something that Brunnhilde can respect. A commander - a boss, a captain - that doesn’t hesitate to charge into the thick of things. There’s something Asgardian about it, in a way that hits the hollow of her heart, and suddenly the whole thing sounds a lot less appealing.

“Didn’t think you were the type to hire a mercenary. With all your lofty ideas about truth and justice.”

“Things aren’t black and white. Sometimes, you need to get your hands in the mud. If the job’s done and we both walk away, that’s what matters.”

Brunnhilde actually rolls her eyes. She’s so earnest that it hurts. Different tactic, then. “You can’t afford me.” Danvers doesn’t seem to be too put out by that. She just shrugs a little and dips a hand into her jacket, pulling out a flask.

“Yeah, probably not,” she says, taking a nip. Wordlessly, she offers it to Brunnhilde, who sniffs and swigs. It’s not like any other alcohol she’s had before: not the brightly-colored liqueurs she’s been drinking for the last howeverthefuck long, not the golden mead back in Asgard. It’s sort of brown, and burns, and is really, really good.

“Fuck me,” Brunnhilde coughs. “What the hell is that?”

“Jack Daniels.” Danvers sounds smug, and that amused grin has turned into a satisfied smirk that Brunnhilde wants to smack right off of her. “I’ve got a whole case of it.”

Brunnhilde thinks it over. It doesn’t take long. “Alright, Danvers. Tell me about this job.”

\---

“You did not tell me we’re infiltrating a Cybs ascension house,” Brunnhilde says, peering at the scans on her ship. The display starts to fizzle - interference from the sandstorm outside - and she smacks it on its side. Danvers stares out the window, peering through the clouds of red dust and sand. She glances back at Brunnhilde, eyes wide, faking innocence.

“It must have slipped my mind.”

The Cybs are a strange cockroach of a species. Nobody’s sure where they came from, but it's said that their homeworld was dying a slow, wheezing death. One more dump planet in a galaxy of dump planets. To survive, they started to graft themselves with cybernetics - metal lungs, metal hearts, metal eyes and limbs and brains. But instead of just finding a new planet and settling down, they started to spread. Go to any major transit hub in the galaxy, and you’d find a couple of Cybs on an intersection, proselytizing about their upcoming age of steel. Brunnhilde had heard the pitch more times than she cared to remember: join the group consciousness, leave your pain and sorrow behind, ascend to digital immortality. Become like them. Glory to the Consciousness.

(She could almost see the appeal, but when she’d jokingly asked about alcohol, the Cyb had only said _Sustenance Is Not Required_ , and really, what’s the fun in forgetting if she can’t get drunk.)

On the outskirts of some planets, the Cybs set up their ascension houses: part laboratories, part barracks, part temples. Walk in there of your own volition, stomp out in Cyb casing, sounding just like the rest of them. According to the tall tales and bar stories Brunnhilde’s heard, it’s an opt-in sort of situation. Say no at any time, you leave. Simple as that.

“So what’s the deal?” Brunnhilde asks. “You said there were prisoners. I thought Cybs only converted the willing.”

“They lied.” Danvers taps something into her wrist computer, pulling up a hologram. “It’s not ascension. It’s not divine. It’s being turned into a metal corpse.” Brunnhilde takes her eyes off the navigation long enough to watch the footage Danvers is showing her. It’s messy: screams and buzzsaws and electricity and clanging metal and screams and screams and screams - 

She doesn’t realize that she’s bent the control wheel until it crunches in her hand. Danvers shuts the recording off. Brunnhilde takes a deep breath.

“Tell me why we aren’t blasting them and calling it a day?”

“I want to,” Danvers says, sounding rueful. “But they’re smart. Cyb tech is hyper-adaptable. It upgrades. Especially their shields, if you blast one away, the next will just be able to absorb it. I can’t risk that. But if we can get the survivors back to civilization, have them tell their story - “

“Then everybody will know what the Cybs are really like,” Brunnhilde finishes. “Even if it doesn’t completely stop them, they’ll lose popularity. Smart.”

Danvers nods. “Exactly.” She brings up a map of the ascension house, all straight lines and ugly, blocky architecture. “We’ll bluff our way in by pretending to be potential converts and find the newest batch of prisoners. According to my intel, they’ll be in one of these back facilities…” Danvers trails off before tapping one of the smaller wings of the building. “Here. You lead them back to the ship, I’ll make sure they don’t follow you. Don’t wait for me, get everybody in then take off.”

“Don’t tell me you’re planning some heroic death crap.” It sounds glib, but she’s serious. Brunnhilde’s seen enough of that. Been through enough.

“Heroic stalling and flying the hell away once you’re gone,” Danvers promises. “Put us down over there.” She points out the window, to a shallow dip in the sand dunes. The ascension house is about half a click away. Normally, Brunnhilde would want to be a lot further away, but with the sandstorm kicking up as much interference, they should be safe. She grabs a rag and goggles she has for crap weather like this. Danvers just taps her wrist again and her jumpsuit shifts, covering her face in a full mask, only leaving some hair in a mohawk.

“Nice look,” Brunnhilde drawls. She sees Danvers smile behind her mask.

They walk in silence for a while, fighting the wind and sand with each step. It’s slow going, and the sand’s going to be an absolute bitch to wash out of her hair, but eventually, the shadow of the ascension house becomes more and more apparent until it looms over them. There’s a small crowd of people at the entrance - the disparaged and distraught, the injured and hopeless, the lost and the displaced. The two of them join the line and wait their turn, shielded against the worst of the storm by the building, taking a half-step forward every few minutes. Danvers zips her jacket all the way up to hide the insignia on her chest. It makes sense, Brunnhilde reasons. They’re just supposed to be two converts.

At the entrance into the ascension house, one of the Cybs is waving people inside. It’s tall, standing over both of them, a mishmash of spare parts, salvaged armor, and barely-exposed wiring peeking out from underneath rags. One of the wires is plugged into a janky-looking tablet, processing information, names, data. It’s wearing a poncho made out of some sort of leather, Brunnhilde can’t tell what. It doesn’t have a jaw, just a speaker where its mouth should be.

“Welcome to Ascension House Double Zeta,” the Cyb buzzes happily. “Please identify yourself.”

Danvers’ mask vanishes and she smiles brightly. “Hi! I’m Wendy, and this is my cousin, Mar - Mary.” Brunnhilde just nods. “We’re interested in the ascension,” she continues, nudging Brunnhilde’s shoulder. “Aren’t we?”

“Oh - yeah,” Brunnhilde says. “Really interested. In ascending to the group whatsit.”

“Consciousness!”

The Cyb considers them, eyes flicking with electric light. “Excellent. Welcome, Wendy. Welcome, Mar-mary. Registration complete. You are welcome to join us. Please enter. You are free to roam within the designated areas. Enjoy your ascension. Glory to the Consciousness.”

Inside, the building is surprisingly well-lit for something so remote. It reminds her of the entrance into a stadium, all overly friendly signs and directions. There’s places to get food - most of the refugees they saw are already waiting or eating - and cots and hammocks to sleep. She’s been in worse places, if she’s honest. She grabs Danvers by the shoulder and hisses in her ear.

“What kind of a stupid name is Mar-mary?

“Not the time,” Danvers snaps back. “Get the prisoners. Get them out. Fly away. I’ll find you later.”

“You’d better. You owe me every damn drink in the realm.”

Danvers doesn’t answer, just curls one hand into a fist and pivots away, striding off into the throng of people. Brunnhilde watches her for a moment, tracking her pristine blonde hair (stupid mask, fucking show-off) in the sea of grays and browns and reds before she sighs and goes to flag down a Cyb. The one she finds is shorter than the doorkeeper, spindlier legs, but not as worn down from the weather.

“Hello! Do you need directions? We have them translated into the five most common languages spoken in this sector, but I am happy to assist if need be.” Even its voice is smoother, less scratchy.

Brunnhilde pauses. Crap, she didn’t have a cover yet. “Yeah. Do you know where I can take a piss?”

“Accessing map. Restroom found.” Without turning its head, the Cyb points down one hallway. “Please proceed to your left sixty universal measuring units, turn right, and continue for twenty universal measuring units. And remember: should you choose to ascend, your body will no longer produce waste.”

“...Thanks,” she says. “Bye.”

Past the bathroom, the hallways is marked out of bounds, indicated by a friendly blue line on the floor. Brunnhilde steps over it cautiously and when nothing happens, no alarms or lasers or sirens, she hurries down into the first door she finds before anybody notices her. The back hallways are a lot less welcoming, but also a lot less diapalated. There’s some serious tech behind this. She moves slowly, keeping to shadows and away from cameras. This deep in, the facility’s a maze of storage and medlabs and charging stations.

It’s not some weird out-of-the-way shelter temple thing, Brunnhilde realizes. It’s a military outpost.

It takes time, but she makes her way through the hallways and corridors. Three times, she has to hide. The first two times, it’s only for a moment, ducking behind a crate while a few Cybs patrol by. But the third, she hops into a ventilation shaft while two Cybs talk beneath her.

“Preparations for conversion nearly complete,” one of them says. “Process will begin in eighty-point-five time units.”

“Excellent,” the other booms. “Begin corralling new materials in sixty time units. Standard ritual suggested. Glory to the Consciousness.”

“Glory to the Consciousness.”

And on and on with some spiritual crap until they stomp away. Brunnhilde counts to a hundred before dropping down and turning the last corridor into the brig.

There’s no guard - which is strange, but she’s not going to argue - just a single cell. The people in it look terrified, bruised, and bloody. One of them’s cradling a broken arm. They flinch when the door opens, but when they see Brunnhilde standing there, they start to murmur.

“Doesn’t look like a Cyb - “

“Could be a trick, some sort of new upgrade - “ 

“No way, do you see those arms?”

“Miss, please - they took me from my child, she’s scared - “

“ - going to kill us all, you have to help - “ 

“ - I want my Daddy, I want my Daddy - “

Brunnhilde raises her hands to try and quiet them down. “Easy, easy. I’ll get you out of here.” She steps closer to the cell door, bending to examine the lock. The prisoner with the broken arm, a Lacertite with red scales, flicks his tongue out.

“You’ll need the key - only one of them has it, it’s the one that’s made out of old Z-fighter parts. He - or, uh, it, I guess? They? They told me - oh, that’s rude, sorry, I’m Briggs. They’re not here right now, something about needing to recharge.”

She wrenches her eyes shut in annoyance. “I do not have the time for all this stealth bullshit,” she says, grabbing the lock and twisting it until it tears off of the door. The prisoners gasp, and door swings open. “Let’s go.”

Retracing her steps is tough; she wasn’t really paying attention to which rooms she was passing on the way in, just focusing on the general direction the brig was. They manage the first few turns fine, but then they need to crowd into a medlab to avoid another patrol, and then they take the other door out which totally screws with Brunnhilde’s navigation, and then - 

“What the hell’s this?”

The room they emerge into is vast, the biggest space in the building she’s seen since the foyer. The walls are lined with servers and databanks, pulsing with lights. They’re all connected, thick wires the size of her wrist, coiling and crisscrossing from one server to the next, spiraling like Yggdrasil’s branches towards the center of the chamber. The wires all connect to a single Cyb, stripped of everything it once was except its skull, which is tilted upwards, mouth open towards the ceiling.

“I know - yeah, I know this,” Briggs says. “It’s the network for the ascension house, and the link to the rest of them. I think they call it the Cyberiad.”

“Fuck,” Brunnhilde says, stepping closer to examine it. Instead of arms, the Cyb has two more wires soldered into its shoulders and wrapping around its skull. Instead of eyes, empty sockets. Instead of a voicebox, a long-distance data transmitter. Nothing that’ll distract from its purpose, just sit and let data flow through it; security system and operations and commander all in one. “You know, I’ve decided. Cybernetics suck.”

“I coulda told you that.” Briggs flicks his tongue out. “I was trying to hack it before they hauled me back for ascension. Get access to this, you’ve got the entire Cyberiad at your clawtips. See where they are, what they know, what their defenses are - it’s how they work, how they have that hive brain. Everything feeds through here.”

“Could you disrupt the link? Take them down?”

“Not - not turn them off, you know? Bioparts take over. But it’d keep them from communicating, but I’d need like thirty minutes, because you know they’ve changed all of their firewalls, and - “ 

Brunnhilde punches the Cyb’s skull as hard as she can. It shatters, bone splintering around her knuckles with a deeply satisfying crunch. The transmitter skitters across the floor, smashing against the far wall deep enough to leave a dent. The less-curious members of the group, the ones who’d hung back, shriek at the newly-exposed cables showering the room with sparks.

For a moment, she basks in a job well done. Then the alarms start.

“ERROR. ERROR. SABOTAGE DETECTED. CYBERIAD UPLINK LOST. INITIATING EMERGENCY PROCEDURES. MANDATORY CONVERSION FOR ALL MATERIALS. GLORY TO THE CONSCIOUSNESS. HAVE A PLEASANT DAY.”

“New plan!” Brunnhilde shouts. “Run!”

The foyer is chaos. Cybs are everywhere, trying to snatch up the converts and pilgrims and refugees alike, moving to block the door and skittering up the walls, how the _hell_ are they doing that. Brunnhilde smells laser fire and charred flesh, and for a moment she’s in the battlefield again, her steed below her and Hela above - 

And then Danvers crashes through the roof.

Brunnhilde races forwards, but Danvers is back on her feet in a moment. She grabs a nearby table and hurls it in the general direction of a few Cybs, sending them crashing into a food stand. Her eyes are glowing, and she looks _angry._ The Cybs start to regroup, shifting their focus away from their victims and towards their threat.

Behind her, somehow, she hears Briggs suck in a breath. “Is that _Carol Danvers?_ ”

“What, the Danvers?”

“It can’t be.”

“It has to be.”

Danvers snarls and whips around. “God dammit, Brunnhilde, I told you to get them out! Not kickstart an invasion!”

“I destroyed the link to their network,” she starts.

“Yeah!” Danvers sweeps her arm around. “I got that!”

“So they can’t upgrade their shields.”

It takes a moment for her to get it, but then Danvers grins. Her fists start to glow, moving up her arms and to her torso where it _spreads._ Her hair stands on end in a halo of golden energy so bright that it reminds Brunnhilde of home, of the golden halls of Asgard, of the sun on her skin, and Danvers starts to hover, and she is one of the most beautiful women that Brunnhilde has ever seen.

“You know, that’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”

“Yeah,” Brunnhilde says, grinning right back at her. She cracks her knuckles. “I thought you’d say that.”

\---

When all is said and done - when the facility is so much rust and glass; when the prisoners and would-be prisoners have been shuttled back to the nearest city; after the thank-yous and grateful pecks on the cheek and turning away when a girl gets scooped up into her Daddies’ arms; she finds Danvers leaning against her ship.

“Not going to go and see your adoring public?” Brunnhilde asks, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. The crowd’s starting to disperse, back to their lives, but a few of them look like they’re headed to a bar. “Sure you can find somebody eager to kiss your ass.”

“I’m good right here,” Danvers says. “Thanks for your help. I think we routed every Cyb on the planet. Nobody’s going to fall for their bull anymore. Put that on your resume.”

“I’m not even going to pretend to know what a resume is.”

Danvers laughs, and Brunnhilde laughs with her. Somehow, she likes Danvers; she likes the way she hits, the way she drinks, the way she fits her jacket. Even the cocky look she gets on her face, how it’s a statement of purpose and a promise to wreck your shit all at once. She was wrong before, she doesn’t want to smack it off.

Brunnhilde pushes Danvers back against the ship and kisses her deep, curling her fingers into the lapel of her jacket. Danvers gets a fistful of Brunnhilde’s hair and pulls her closer while her other hand goes down to squeeze at her hip. Even through three layers of leather, she can feel it. She bites at Danvers’ lower lip when she draws back and jerks her head towards the ship.

“In.”

Danvers peels her jacket off as she goes and Brunnhilde tears off her gauntlets, tossing them haphazardly onto the floor. She barely has enough time to unclip her cape before Danvers turns around and jumps her. Instinct nearly kicks in, she nearly thrusts an elbow into her gut, but instead she catches Danvers easily. Danvers kisses her again, wrapping her thighs around her waist, and wow, those thighs are somehow even stronger than she’d expected.

Brunnhilde guides them to the cockpit and drops down into her seat. Danvers’ hands fiddle with the clasp of her tunic, loosening the belt before pulling it free entirely. There’s still a ways to go - she’s still wearing her breastplate, her underarmor, and her underwear - but it’s a damn good start. Danvers grinds against her lap, and Brunnhilde moans into Danvers’ mouth.

“I swear,” Danvers drawls. “I didn’t hire you just so I could sleep with you.”

“Danvers? Shut the fuck up.”

Carol shuts the fuck up.

\---

After they’re done - first in the cockpit, then the kitchen, then Brunnhilde’s room - they lie in bed. Brunnhilde’s on her side, and Carol’s behind her, enveloping her like a blanket. It’s nice, being held like this for the first time in a while. She’s had flings since Asgard, fans, even a boyfriend, once, for a few weeks before he left. But none of them have stood by her side, faced down a horde of grinding metallic bastards and come out on top. None of them trusted her to do something really important when lives were on the line, or have the faith that she’d get it done. None of them really got her.

“I like your tattoo,” Carol says, idly stroking the inside of Brunnhilde’s arm. “Does it mean anything?” She stiffens a little, and Carol stops. “You don’t have to -”

“No.” She likes Carol. Maybe even trusts her a little. But not with that. “I don’t.”

Carol doesn’t touch the tattoo again, but she does cuddle closer, wrapping her arms tight around Brunnhilde’s belly. She nestles her face between Brunnhilde’s shoulder blades and she’s quiet for a long, long time. Long enough that Brunnhilde’s certain that she’s fallen asleep, until Carol speaks up again.

“Maria.”

“What?”

“That’s what I started to call you earlier. Not Mar-mary. Maria. She was - is - I knew her - know her back home. You ever been to Earth? C-53?”

“Nope.”

“It’s got a lot going for it. Nice bright sun. Really good music. Big cities, big oceans, big mountains, big everything.”

It reminds Brunnhilde of the travel and conquest, charging across the Bifrost and not knowing where they’d be called to next. The fiery pits of Muspelheim, the endless clouds and forests of Vanir, the golden halls of Asgard, and the untamed, barely-populated lands in Midgard. Hadn’t the All-Father talked about visiting there again? It’s been so long.

“Maria?” she prompts.

“You’d like her,” Carol says. “She thinks I’m a pain in the ass too.” She tickles a little bit at Brunnhilde’s side, and she laughs and bats Carol’s hand away. “We were soldiers together. Pilots. We lived together, cooked together, slept together. I was the best Auntie _ever_ to her daughter - “

“Just hers?” Brunnhilde says. She turns around, partly to look at Carol in the eye, partly because her arm’s falling asleep. “In Asgard we called that marriage.”

“Everything but the certificate. Earth’s stupid about things like that, two women together. She lost me once, the first time I left. Thought I was dead. When I came back - well, there was a lot of shit going on. And I had to leave again before we could really figure out where we stood. And I think - “ She chokes, but continues. “I think about her every day, but I don’t know how to go back.”

“You miss her?” Carol nods, and Brunnhilde realizes that she’s crying. After all of the fighting and adrenaline and danger, thinking about those she’s left behind is what messes with Carol Danvers’ head. Brunnhilde can sympathize, sauntering around with a bottle in her hand and a whole lot of silence where her conscious should be. She reaches out to shush her, to wipe the tears from her eyes with her thumb. “Svafa,” she says. The name feels almost foreign on her tongue, like a word in a language she’s forgotten. “My wife. Was Svafa.”

“You too?”

“Our Princess killed her in battle. I lost everything. My home. My wife. My rock. When I lost her, I lost the rain.”

“I’m sorry.” Carol presses their foreheads together. She closes her eyes, and Brunnhilde does as well.

“I’d tear out my eyes if it meant I could see her again. She - your Maria - she’d understand if you went back, Carol. Don’t think she won’t.”

“Thank you,” Carol whispers. “We’re really fucked up.” Brunnhilde snorts and kisses her again. Gently, and only once.

“Yeah. I guess we are.”

They don’t speak again and slowly drift to sleep.

\---

Brunnhilde wakes the next morning to a pounding somewhere behind her temples, and also to the door of her ship. The bed’s empty, which she doesn’t realize until she’s rolled off of it and barely thrown a robe on, not bothering to tie it shut. She’s played the escapist enough times, she’s not hurt by Carol leaving without saying goodbye.

Not too much, anyway.

But when she opens the door and sticks her head out, squinting through the sunlight, there Carol is, in uniform and hoisting a large chest on one shoulder. “Breakfast?” Brunnhilde asks, stepping back to let her inside.

“Payment,” Carol says, setting the chest down. She unlatches the lid and swings it open. Inside, there’s somewhere around a dozen bottles of what’s unmistakably the same liquor that Danvers plied her with back at the bar. “Should last you a while.”

“Maybe a few days,” Brunnhilde says. “That’s that, then? We’re good?”

“We’re good. Stay out of trouble, Brunnhilde.”

“Stay _in_ trouble, Danvers.” Carol laughs and raises her middle finger into the air, which Brunnhilde figures is some Earth way of saying goodbye, so she raises hers as well. It only makes Carol laugh harder.

“Unless…” Carol thrusts her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I was thinking this morning, on my way back. You’re right.”

“That’s a first.”

“I mean about what you said. I haven’t seen Maria in a while. Might be time for me to head back to Earth for a visit. And Earth’s got a lot more spirits to offer than just whiskey. So…” She glances up, past the ship and the sky and the stars. “How about it?”

This isn’t forgetting the past, she tells herself. It’s not a cure, it’s not a glorious return to who she used to be. Carol isn’t Svafa, it won’t be the same as her life used to be: her wife, her sisters, her kingdom. It’s scrappy and manic and Carol does it because she wants to, not even to get paid. But fighting for a cause again, and for a woman who’ll stand her ground until the end - it’s something.

Brunnhilde grins.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this happened. I haven't completed anything in probably about five or six years, but this idea popped into my head a few days after seeing Captain Marvel, and then Valkyrie/Carol _exploded_ in popularity when I was about halfway through writing it. Thanks to bessyboo for being a sounding board for ideas, as well as instigator, printed_soot, and AllAreLies for being such great betas.
> 
> The Cybs are a _very very sneaky and subtle_ reference to the Cybermen from Doctor Who. They're a mishmash of several versions, but primarily taken from a rejected re-imagining of them from the 1996 movie, where they were conceived as Mad Max style scavengers.
> 
> Svafa was a Valkyrie in Norse mythology, also known for being the likely aunt of Sigurd, a prominent character from Germanic folklore.


End file.
